The Apple’s Song Tap me with your finger, rub me with your sleeve, hold me, sniff me, peel me curling round and round till I burst out white and cold from my tight red coat and tingle in your palm as if I’d melt and breathe a living pomander waiting for the minute of joy when you lift me to your mouth and crush me and in taste and fragrance I race through your head in my dizzy dissolve. I sit in the bowl in my cool corner and watch you as you pass smoothing your apron. Are you thirsty yet? My eyes are shining. (c) Edwin Morgan. Poems appear with kind permission of Carcanet Press and Mariscat Press